


Red Hot American Apparel

by nimmieamee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 1x06 Coda, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10099058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: Everybody's dressing up to try and snag Betty Cooper.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Jughead is into Betty in this fic, so please do not read if that upsets you.

At the thrift store near the Greendale bridge, Jughead scored a ten-dollar suit that more or less fit. When Betty nodded at it, it was the first time in three months that anyone had looked at him with open approval.

Not that he needed approval. But from Betty was nice. Betty didn't know it, but she had the shape of Riverdale's American dream. Green grass lawns and white summer linens, wholesome picnic lunches, summer cabins by the lake.

Riverdale was never really like that for most people. It wasn't even like that for Betty. 

But you could tell a lot about how people reacted to the town by how they reacted to her. Veronica Lodge with forward desire, ready to stake a claim on something new. Archie by casually taking the good for granted, with no malice, just with the easy privilege that came of being Fred Andrews' kid. Cheryl Blossom with vicious rejection, because Cheryl, like Jughead, knew only a Riverdale that had no hint of small-town sweetness. 

Jughead just thought,

_I don't want to lose this. This is better than everything else we've got._

She wasn't his any more than Riverdale was his, obviously. But as soon as he thought she'd be okay with it, it wouldn't bother her, she was open to it--

He kissed her. 

He wasn't pretending to be the world's best kisser, but it wasn't just a kiss. It was an unwinding. Neither of them was their families, Jughead wasn't his father, Betty was better and truer than Alice Cooper's straight-jacket morality, and when she kissed back he was overcome with relief and gratitude.

She still cared most about Polly because this was _Betty_ and that was _right_. But she smiled anyway, like he did it right, like she liked it.

-

She also liked the jacket that Jellybean had picked out for their dad three years ago, the blue one with the shearling. 

Since it was thick and well-made and FP wasn't using it, Jughead had swiped it before he'd left home. He was glad he did.

When Betty saw him in it, her approval sat in the curve of her eyebrow. The tilt of her chin. Betty had a tomboy quirk that lifted her whole face up, openly appreciative and uncaring of whether people noticed. And on the one hand he cared most about solving Jason Blossom's murder and getting to the truth, but on the other hand if the investigation went on forever then maybe that was fine, because it meant more chances to get her to look like that.

At him.

This was as much about him as much as her. Before he realized she liked the jacket, he tended to avoid wearing it. It was too distinctive. If he wore one of his black jackets and some flannel, it all ran together. No one could tell if he showed up two days in a row wearing the same thing, no one would ask questions. He only had so much clothing, after all. A backpack's worth. He shouldn't have worried about looking good.

When he tried, it was just an excuse for Reggie Mantle to shove him and say, "Look at you, Carrie. Gunning for prom queen?"

"You do know how that movie ends, right?" Jughead said, rolling his eyes.

That rejoinder only confirmed what people like Reggie Mantle already thought about him, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the way Betty licked her bottom lip when she saw him. How she pulled him in when Kevin left the offices of the Blue and Gold and they were alone.

It still wasn't the kiss itself that did him in, but the fact that she initiated. The sleuth, the heroine, the realest being in town was inviting _him_ in. Jughead's experiences with kissing had boiled down to a very drunk moment with Archie last year, and this was no less intensely, oddly physical than that. But what it meant was greater. It was more cerebral. Where's was his place in Riverdale? Nowhere, except for right here right now, pressing his mouth to Betty Cooper's bottom lip.

It didn't break off until she wanted it to. He'd decided it wouldn't start or stop until she wanted it to.

"Juggie," she said, looking a little sheepish. "Can we define -- I mean. Is this-- is this exclusive?"

He had no idea. He thought, okay, Archie or Veronica. Those were her only two reasons to ask that.

"Whatever you want," he said.

"I've kind of been--" she made a strange hand-wave gesture "--you know, with someone else. Kind of doing the same thing? Since the Chuck thing."

Veronica then.

-

By then Veronica had only been in Riverdale a month. Within the first sixteen days of that month, she'd made more friends in the town than Jughead had in sixteen years.

He thought maybe the novel wasn't capturing her properly. It talked about a Park Avenue Ice Queen. There was a solitude in that image. He was good at writing in solitude.

Didn't apply to Veronica Lodge, though. Week one, she acquired Betty, then Archie. Week two, she was close to Kevin. Week three, Cheryl Blossom was shooting red-lipped smiles her way. Week four, she was a pussycat.

Veronica took laps around the narrative. In thigh-high boots. After a month, there wasn't a single person in Riverdale who didn't know her or know of her.

This time she showed up with Kevin, both of them sliding in across from him in his booth at Pop's.

"I'm just going to get this out very quickly, because I can't believe I'm saying it, but she likes the suspenders," Veronica said without preamble.

Betty had told her. Obviously Betty had told her. Betty was the girl who _would_ be honest about maintaining two separate quasi-relationship things with two separate people.

"The suspenders are, uh, a daring choice, by the way," Kevin put in. "Even if by daring I mean perplexing."

Veronica made a puzzling hasty gesture, like she was trying to wave at the ceiling.

"What does that mean?" Jughead said.

"Pull them _on_ sometimes," she said, like this should be obvious, like a ceiling wave was the accepted international hand signal for 'don't wear things if you're not going to use them properly.'

"You had them on at the funeral and it got you a sneak-away makeout session," Kevin said. "Right?"

"We went to Jason's bedroom to investigate," Jughead said slowly.

"And you didn't make out while you were there?" Kevin asked. He looked astonished at this.

Jughead refused to follow the typical teenage train of thought that would have left him kissing the best person in Riverdale in a dead boy's bedroom in front of the dead boy's dementia-riddled grandmother. It felt very Riverdale and thankfully not remotely Jughead. 

"Why are you here?" he said instead. Mostly to Kevin but also to Veronica.

Veronica said, "Okay, he's here because his crisp and classic student body president style is something you can and should learn from--"

"Thank you," Kevin said. "Elections in two weeks. Vote Kevin!"

"Don't worry, we all will," said Veronica, apparently empowered to speak for their whole social group. Jughead was surprised that _she_ wasn't running. If she ever did, she might very well win.

Now she added, "But also, it's like, I look better in my yellow Herve Leger top than I do in the purple one, but you see me wearing the purple one more."

Jughead stared at her.

Veronica stared back.

"Betty likes the purple one better," she said slowly, like she thought he was being obtuse on purpose.

-

He shouldn't have been taking style tips from his maybe-rival, a girl who had confessed multiple times to once being more manipulative and competitive than even Cheryl Blossom. 

But he did pull the suspenders up the next day. He felt stupid doing it: suspenders and a t-shirt.

This time when Betty kissed him, she spent some time grabbing them and dancing her fingers up, down his chest. Pulling them down. It was a reason to get in very close, a reason for her to undress him a little. 

The concept here -- that Jughead Jones was worth undressing -- undid him.

But that was their free period. In bio she was back with Veronica, and he was back by himself in the front. He dared to look at them over his shoulder and Veronica caught him. Winked. Her hands were on her pearls. He had a flash: Betty tugging at them, Betty getting handsy with them.

It didn't exactly turn him on and it didn't exactly hurt. It just felt exasperating, like Veronica had figured out the mechanics of this when he never, ever could.

And it felt right.

Betty liking him wasn't just about Betty liking him. It was about being a person who could make Betty look like she approved, like she was glad.

In his novel, that person was Archie. But first drafts could be like that. They could have all kinds of inaccuracies.

-

He didn't interact with Veronica Lodge by choice, but sometimes when they were sitting together with the group he would say, under his breath, "The cloak."

And she would roll her eyes and say, "Well, duh, the _cloak_ ," like it was very common for human beings not born in the eighteenth century to be turned on by cloaks, and then she'd add, "That dirty t-shirt with the S on it. For some reason."

It wasn't dirty. It was just so old it looked dirty. Dirty was the look Jughead gave her.

But she was right. Betty liked tracing the S gently with one hand while kissing along his cheekbone. He somehow thought Veronica guessed that. 

He was spitballing about the cloak. He just thought about the drama of it, a Park Avenue princess laid out on all that soft darkness, Betty's eyes lighting up like someone had laid out that picture just for her.

The best thing about Betty was that she was brave and fair and moral down to her bones. The worst thing about Betty was how surprised she seemed at the thought that Jughead and Veronica, two separate and antithetical veins of Riverdale darkness, would be drawn to her.

**Author's Note:**

> Short coda this week because I have a busy weekend! There's a [maybe-sequel involving a slumber party](http://nimmieamee.tumblr.com/post/158120825231/riverdale-fic-red-hot-american-apparel/mobile) that will not be finished because 1. I have no time, & 2\. It's too cracky even for me.
> 
> This was inspired by a prompt on the riverdale kinkmeme, but the prompter didn't specify whether they were cool with beronica, so I am not sure of the etiquette of posting it there. Still, big thanks to that person. I too liked the scene where Betty nodded appreciatively at Jughead's suit and Jughead smiled like he was Rachel Leigh Cook in _She's All That_.


End file.
